The End of the Solidly Democratic South: The Impressionable‐Years Hypothesis

The partisan realignment of the White South, which transformed this region from being solidly Democratic to being the base of the Republican Party, has been the focus of much scholarship. Exactly how it occurred is unclear. Widespread individual‐level attitude changes would be contrary to the well‐known within‐person stability of party identification. However, according to the impressionable‐years hypothesis, events that occur during adolescence and early adulthood may have a lasting impact on later political attitudes. This would suggest that cohort replacement may be driving partisan realignment. We test this possibility using data from the American National Election Studies from 1960 to 2008. Consistent with the impressionable‐years hypothesis, Southern Whites from the pre‐Civil Rights cohort (born before 1936) maintained their Democratic Party identification longer than their younger counterparts. However, all cohorts in the South have changed their partisan attitudes at comparable rates over time, contrary to the impressionable‐years hypothesis. These data suggest that the partisan realignment of the South was driven by both cohort replacement and within‐cohort attitude change. More targeted case studies of older cohorts living through the civil rights era, and of younger cohorts in the post‐Reagan era, yield results generally consistent with the impressionable‐years hypothesis. More generally, our findings suggest that very large scale events are required to disrupt the normal continuity of party identification across the life span.     

Aging and attitude change.

Social psychologists have proposed a variety of different models to account for people's relative openness to attitude change through the life cycle. Two of the most important models are the impressionable years model, which suggests an especially great openness to change among the young, and the lifelong openness model, which suggests that age is unrelated to openness to attitude change. Two studies were conducted to examine the openness of people of varying ages to attitude change. In both studies, the influence of personal experiences with government agencies on attitudes toward government was examined. The attitudes of older people changed as much or more in response to their personal experiences as did those of younger people. These results support the lifelong openness model of attitude change.     

A new look at the consequences of attitude certainty: the amplification hypothesis

It is well established that increasing attitude certainty makes attitudes more resistant to attack and more predictive of behavior. This finding has been interpreted as indicating that attitude certainty crystallizes attitudes, making them more durable and impactful. The current research challenges this crystallization hypothesis and proposes an amplification hypothesis, which suggests that instead of invariably strengthening an attitude, attitude certainty amplifies the dominant effect of the attitude on thought, judgment, and behavior. In 3 experiments, the authors test these competing hypotheses by comparing the effects of attitude certainty manipulations on univalent versus ambivalent attitudes. Across experiments, it is demonstrated that increasing attitude certainty strengthens attitudes (e.g., increases their resistance to persuasion) when attitudes are univalent but weakens attitudes (e.g., decreases their resistance to persuasion) when attitudes are ambivalent. These results are consistent with the amplification hypothesis.     

Attitude change following persuasive communication: Integrating Social Judgment Theory and the Elaboration Likelihood Model

An experiment was conducted to examine the influence of the perceived extremity of a message and motivation to elaborate upon the process of persuasion. The first goal was to test a model of attitude change relating Social Judgment Theory to the Elaboration Likelihood Model. The second objective was to develop an instrument to measure attitude structure (latitudes of acceptance, non-commitment, and rejection) that allowed for a more refined assessment of the discrepancy between the position advocated in a message and the recipient's initial attitude. The main dependent variable was the attitude towards the use of automobiles in relation to environmental issues. Subjects were confronted with a message located in their own latitude of acceptance, rejection or non-commitment. Shortly after, a second measurement of attitude took place. The results showed that messages within the latitudes of non-commitment gave rise to the greatest attitude change. The data support the susceptibility hypothesis that subjects elaborate messages mainly in the latitude of non-commitment.     

Development of personality in early and middle adulthood: set like plaster or persistent change?

Different theories make different predictions about how mean levels of personality traits change in adulthood. The biological view of the Five-factor theory proposes the plaster hypothesis: All personality traits stop changing by age 30. In contrast, contextualist perspectives propose that changes should be more varied and should persist throughout adulthood. This study compared these perspectives in a large (N = 132,515) sample of adults aged 21-60 who completed a Big Five personality measure on the Internet. Conscientiousness and Agreeableness increased throughout early and middle adulthood at varying rates; Neuroticism declined among women but did not change among men. The variety in patterns of change suggests that the Big Five traits are complex phenomena subject to a variety of developmental influences.     

The perception of consistency in attitudes

A study was conducted to test the hypothesis that when people change their attitudes they reduce the dissonance associated with the inconsistency of their new and previous positions by distorting their recall of their initial stand to make it consistent with their new attitude. Small groups of high school students discussed bussing, one of 30 pretested issues. An experimental confederate participated in each session with the task of effecting attitude change. After the discussion, the subjects' new attitudes were assessed and they were asked to duplicate their pretest scores. The results confirmed the hypothesis. Subjects distorted their recall of their initial stand on bussing so as to make it consistent with their new attitude. Such distortion allows persons to feel that their new position is the one they have always held. The subjects made such recall errors only on the bussing issue. Control subjects did not distort their original bussing attitudes.     

Morningness–eveningness orientation and attitude change: Evidence for greater systematic processing and attitude change at optimal time-of-day

This study examines the relationship between morningness–eveningness orientation and time-of day on attitude change, and tests the hypothesis that people will be more persuaded when tested at their optimal time-of-day (i.e., morning for M-types and evening for E-types) than non-optimal time-of-day (i.e., evening for M-Types and morning for E-types). Two hundred and twenty participants read a message that contained either strong vs. weak quality counter-attitudinal arguments (anti-voluntary euthanasia) in the morning (9.00 a.m.) or in the evening (7.00 p.m.). When tested at their respective optimal time-of-day (for both M- and E-types) there was a reliable difference in attitude change between the strong vs. weak messages (indicating message processing had occurred) while there was no difference between strong vs. weak messages when tested at their non-optimal time-of-day. In addition, the amount of message-congruent thinking mediated the attitude change. The results show that M- and E-types pay greater attention to and elaborate on a persuasive message at their optimal time-of-day, and this leads to increased attitude change, compared to those tested at their non-optimal time-of-day.     

Cold hearts and bleeding hearts: disciplinary differences in university students' sociopolitical orientations

Many people believe that a university education leads to the liberalization of students' worldviews. The author aimed to investigate whether such differences occur across disciplines and whether they are due to self-selection or socialization within disciplines. The author conducted 3 correlational studies of university students (N = 223, N = 531) and alumni (N = 143). The results clearly supported the self-selection hypothesis and suggested that students from all disciplines generally endorse liberal or left-wing attitudes. These findings have theoretical implications for the study of belief system development (primarily the impressionable years hypothesis), and they contribute to a greater understanding of how a university education affects the sociopolitical orientations of students.     

Previous Conceptions of the Typical Group Member and the Contact Hypothesis

Allport's (1954) contact hypothesis predicted that pleasant contact with a member of a negatively stigmatized group would change attitudes both toward the specific person interacted with (specific attitude change) and also toward the group as a whole (generalization). Many previous studies of the contact hypothesis have demonstrated specific attitude change. In previous studies that demonstrated generalization, attitude change toward the group as a whole might have occurred because participants changed their opinions about what constituted a "typical" group member. Although this postulated mechanism of attitude change is difficult to test directly, our study sought indirect support by showing that preexisting conceptions of the typical group member differ in a way that affects the extent of generalization. Students who initially conceived of the typical person with AIDS (PWA) as an abstraction displayed greater generalization following pleasant contact with a PWA than did students who initially conceived of the typical PWA as a specific person. The generalization part of Allport's contact hypothesis may thus be related to recent research on social categorization.     

Learning and Affect Following Near‐Miss Outcomes in Simulated Gambling

Gambling near‐misses are non‐rewarded events that resemble a winning configuration. Past research using slot machines has shown that moderate rates of near‐misses increase gambling persistence, but the mechanisms supporting this persistence are unclear. One hypothesis is that near‐misses are mistakenly interpreted as signals of skill acquisition, supporting learning and fuelling the ‘illusion of control’. A slot machine simulation was administered to 60 volunteers, with ratings of the perceived chances of winning, pleasure and motivation to play following particular outcomes. Psychophysiological measures (electrodermal activity and heart rate) were taken, and gambling persistence was measured after 30 trials. Near‐misses were similar to full‐miss outcomes in that they were regarded as unpleasant. However, near‐misses were akin to win outcomes in that they increased motivations to play and electrodermal activity. Learning was evidenced by the expectancy of winning increasing following wins and decreasing after losses. Although there was no overall change in expectancy of winning after near‐misses across all participants, those subjects reporting a greater increase in the expectancy of winning following a near‐miss showed more persistent play, consistent with the learning hypothesis. Greater heart rate acceleration following near‐misses was also associated with persistence. We also observed differential effects of near‐misses where the reel stopped either side of the winning position (‘payline’): motivational effects were restricted to near‐misses stopping before the payline, whereas near‐misses that stopped after the payline were primarily aversive. The payline effects are not predicted by the learning hypothesis and may indicate an affective component to near‐misses, possibly linked to counterfactual processing. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cognitive and affective matching effects in persuasion: an amplification perspective

Past research suggests that cognitive and affective attitudes are more open to change toward cognitive and affective (i.e., matched) persuasive attacks, respectively. The present research investigates how attitude certainty influences this openness. Although an extensive literature suggests that certainty generally reduces an attitude's openness to change, the authors explore the possibility that certainty might increase an attitude's openness to change in the context of affective or cognitive appeals. Based on the recently proposed amplification hypothesis, the authors posit that high (vs. low) attitude certainty will boost the resistance of attitudes to mismatched attacks (e.g., affective attitudes attacked by cognitive messages) but boost the openness of attitudes to matched attacks (e.g., affective attitudes attacked by affective messages). Two experiments provide support for this hypothesis. Implications for increasing the openness of attitudes to both matched and mismatched attacks are discussed.     

Is social comparison irrelevant for producing choice shifts?

After 15 years of research on group induced shifts in individual choice, two hypotheses, social comparison (involving image maintenance) and persuasive arguments (involving attitude change), have emerged as the leading explanatory contenders. Burnstein and his associates have recently reported a series of studies that they feel clearly establish the persuasive arguments hypothesis as the best explanation for the shifts. The present paper takes issue with their conclusion. A study is presented that supports a social comparison interpretation of one of the experiments reported in Burnstein and Vinokur (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 1973, 9, 123–137). In addition, a critical analysis of several other key studies reported by Burnstein and his associates yields the conclusion that neither hypothesis completely accounts for the available data. Rather, both image maintenance and attitude change processes may operate in a complementary manner, with persuasive arguments facilitating the shifts motivated by social comparison. Parallels are drawn between the factors that affect choice shifts and those that affect conformity behavior.     

The Emotional Maturity of Pre- and Post-Menarcheal Girls

The aim of this investigation was to test the hypothesis that early developing adolescent girls have a less favorable attitude towards school than late developers. The Ss were 104 grammar school girls of mean age 14 years 1 month. All Ss were given Fitt's test of attitude towards school. Twenty-two pairs of early and late developers, matched for chronological age, IQ, and social class, were compared with regard to their mean attitude score and their responses to individual items of the attitude scale. The early developers were found to have a significantly less favorable mean attitude score. There was also a tendency for more early developers to endorse unfavorable items and for more late developers to endorse favorable items.     

The effect of stimulus duration on the persistence of gratings

The persistence of gratings varying in spatial frequency and exposure duration was measured using a stimulus-blank alternation method. Persistence was found to lengthen with increasing spatial frequency and to shorten with increasing exposure duration. For each spatial frequency, persistence decreased linearly with a slope of approximately —.75 as duration increased for short stimulus durations. For longer stimulus durations, the rate of decline in persistence with increasing duration was reduced, the slope being approximately —.13. The stimulus duration at which the change in slope of the persistence-duration relationship occurred was shown to increase with increasing spatial frequency and was approximately equivalent to the critical duration for each spatial frequency. The data were consistent with an interpretation of persistence in terms of a temporal integration component and a second, possibly cortically located, component.     

Emerging perspectives on the structure and function of attitude strength

For more than 20 years, scholars have used the term “attitude strength” to refer to the durability and impactfulness of attitudes, and a large literature attests to the important leverage that this concept offers for understanding and predicting behaviour. Despite its prominence, however, a number of fundamental questions remain regarding the structure and function of attitude strength. In this chapter we draw on a wide range of evidence to clarify the nature of attitude strength. Rather than conceiving of attitude strength as a meaningful psychological construct, we argue that it is better conceptualised as an umbrella term that refers in only the most general way to multiple, separable classes of attitude outcomes, instigated by different antecedents and produced by distinct psychological processes. Although strong attitudes share a set of general qualities—resistance to change, persistence over time, impact on thought and behaviour—there are many distinct routes by which attitudes come to possess these qualities, and many diverse ways in which these qualities manifest themselves. Our analysis shifts the focus away from the structural properties of attitude strength and towards a fuller appreciation of the distinct sources from which attitudes derive their strength. We argue in particular for the value of attending more closely to the social bases of attitude strength, and we illustrate the value of this approach by reviewing several lines of research.     

Communication and consistency: AIDS talk and AIDS attitudes

The main hypothesis tested in this study is that the frequency of talk about a particular domain is related to the consistency of attitudes in that domain. This hypothesis was developed by viewing talk as one of the ways in which people express their identities and by exploring the interpersonal processes involved in the construction of consistency. The hypothesis was tested with a questionnaire completed by 73 students at Oxford University. The first part of the questionnaire consisted of items related to attitude, and the second part contained questions about respondents' conversations about AIDS and related topics. Strong support was found for the hypothesis relating frequency of talk with consistency of attitudes. Data about who the respondents talked to about AIDS and the perceived agreement between them and their discussion partners demonstrated the homogeneity of the discussion environment. The implications for understanding attitude formation and change in everyday social contexts are considered.     

Age-related changes in rate of visual information processing

Each of four groups of 12 subjects performed four psychophysical tasks. The age ranges of the four groups were 19-31, 45-57, 58-70, and 71-83 years, respectively. All four tasks required some form of visual information processing: Two were backward-masking tasks; two were temporal-integration tasks. In all four tasks increasing temporal functions over age were obtained, suggesting slower processing rates as age increased. The results support an active processing model of visual perception that interprets duration of visible persistence and duration of interval in which backward masking is effective as indices of the time course of early stages in the processing of stimulus features. The evidences also suggests that backward masking and visible persistence may be mediated by distinct mechanisms that are affected differently by aging processes. A model that conceptualizes the visual system as a multichannel processor is proposed as an explanation for some of the findings.     

教师态度与指导方式对幼儿坚持性影响的实验研究

本研究采用3×2×2(年龄×教师态度×言语指导方式)三因素完全随机实验设计,考察了教师态度和言语指导对3~6岁幼儿坚持性的影响。其中幼儿年龄、教师态度及言语指导方式为实验的自变量,幼儿坚持完成任务的时间为实验因变量,设计4种实验情境,并随机选择沈阳市两所幼儿园,分层选取小、中、大班的幼儿作为实验研究的被试,年龄分布在3~6岁之间,每种情境下每个年龄段的有效被试各为30人,男女各半,共360人。研究结果表明:(1)3~6岁幼儿的坚持性随着年龄的增长而逐渐发展,且4~5岁是幼儿坚持性发展的转折期;(2)不同的教师态度对幼儿的坚持性影响显著;(3)不同的言语指导方式对幼儿坚持性影响显著;(4)教师积极态度下,多次言语指导对幼儿的坚持性会产生最积极的影响。     

The Impact of the Antitobacco Norm on the Selected Mode of Cognitive Dissonance Reduction

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that when behavior violates an antismoking injunctive norm, dissonance is aroused, but the injunctive norm constrains how people reduce their discomfort. In Experiment 1, participants with positive or negative attitudes toward public smoking wrote an essay for or against a ban on public smoking. Whereas attitude change occurred for those whose counter‐attitudinal essay supported the antismoking norm, those whose counter‐attitudinal essay violated the antismoking norm did not change their attitudes to reduce dissonance. In Experiment 2, participants who wrote against the ban on public smoking eschewed attitude change in favor of reducing dissonance through trivialization and act rationalization. The discussion focuses on how maintaining social connections makes cognitions resistant to change when dissonance is aroused.     

A self-validation perspective on the mere thought effect

Self-generated thought has an important impact on attitude change, with repeated demonstrations of increased opportunity for thought about an attitude object increasing attitude extremity. The traditional explanation for this mere thought effect is that more time to think allows people to produce more attitude-consistent thoughts, which polarize their attitudes. Expanding on this structural perspective, the current research explores a metacognitive account for the effect of time on attitude polarization. Three experiments demonstrate that thought confidence plays an independent mediating role in the mere thought effect (Experiment 1), that it accounts for reversals in the mere thought effect when people have too much time to think (Experiment 2), and that this reversal is tied to the difficulty people have retrieving thoughts when too much time is provided (Experiment 3). Thus, taking metacognitive features of thought into account sheds new light on self-persuasion in the mere thought paradigm.